The Delano grape growers, dependent on all of this labor, were particularly anxious about the possibility of any significant jump in workers’ wages. Perhaps more worrying was the long-term decline in U.S. per capita table grape consumption, from an average high of 6.8 pounds per year from 1934 to 1938 to a low of 3.7 pounds in 1965.3 Unable to agree on a marketing order that would keep some vineyards out of production, the growers faced an extremely unwelcome conclusion: they had planted too many vines, and unless consumption patterns changed, they stood to lose plenty of money. They could partially cover their losses by selling their grapes for wine-crush—many varieties can go both ways, although high-quality wine grapes make poor table grapes—but the crush price is far below the fresh price. A grower who paid for all the pre-harvest work necessary to produce a table grape and then, because of an oversupplied market, decided to sell for crush would not even make the average return of a straight wine grape grower. If, on the other hand, a grower decided to avoid the pre-harvest costs of fresh grapes and produce just for the wine market, he would have to write off whatever capital investment he had made in packing sheds and cooling facilities, as well as missing whatever chance he might have to take advantage of a quick upturn in the table grape market, where large profits might make up for the long years of soft markets.
None of the choices were good, and in 1965, men whose wealth was based on the production of table grapes faced an uncertain future. Would the long slump in grape consumption ever be reversed? It was hard to tell; until the 1920s, table grapes had never been an important product of the vine. Although vineyards are nearly as old as agriculture, first mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphics around 2400 BC, the ancients were not much interested in eating grapes. Noah used his vineyard to make wine, as did the Greeks in Homeric times. The French, who received grape cuttings from the Phoenicians and started planting vineyards in 600 BC, were wine drinkers, not grape eaters. Franciscans and Jesuits, who carefully carried cuttings to California and other far reaches of the New World, drank the grapes they grew. Only during the Gold Rush did people eat enough grapes to create a small local market, and local it had to remain because fresh grapes could not travel far before they spoiled. Grapes started being put on refrigerated rail cars and moved around the country in large quantities only because Prohibition legislation allowed individuals to make up to 200 gallons of wine for their own consumption. Strong spirits and beer received no similar legal dispensation, and with most U.S. wineries closed down, the field was clear for the household winemakers. Prior to prohibition, average U.S. wine production was about forty-five to fifty million gallons. By 1930, makeshift vintners were brewing, even by the low official count, 145 million gallons of wine. The price of grapes, which had topped out at $75 a ton before 1919, had doubled by 1920, with some selling for $300 a ton within two years.4
California growers planted more than 128 million new vines between 1919 and 1925, an increase of more than 50 percent. Vines producing the more hardy table grape varieties that could also be used to make wine (like Thompson seedless grapes) were especially popular and increased by 250 percent.5 Most of this new acreage was planted on the eastern outskirts of the old Tulare Basin, by relatively poor Italian and Croatian immigrants who bought cheap dry land and used the relatively new centrifugal pump to tap ground water and irrigate their vineyards. Led by Joseph DiGiorgio, the more successful new growers threw up packing sheds as quickly as possible, and in cooperation with the railroads, they improved and extended the infrastructure necessary to keep the fresh grapes cool on the trip east. Bunches of fresh grapes, the vast majority grown in and around Delano, began to appear all over the country. Most were destined for wine vats, but some made their way to the dinner table, and a new national market was born.
But bust follows boom, and by the mid-twenties the table grape market crashed. The new growers had put in too many vines. Some of them went broke even before the Depression officially arrived. A few dozen survived the crisis and acquired holdings of thousands of acres. But when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the problem of oversupply intensified. Per capita sales fell consistently. No one knew where the bottom was.
The immigrant farmers who had prospered through the various ups and downs in the market had acquired enough land and had diversified into other fruit so that their dominant class position was secure. But this was a small group of people. Although there were thousands of table grape growers in California in 1965, only thirty-eight in the Delano-Arvin area also owned the packing sheds, enormous cold storage warehouses, and shipping facilities without which a table grape was a useless commodity.6 These grower-packer-shippers charged the smaller, dependent growers for precooling, inspecting, storing, and selling the crop. Often they also provided the smaller producers with their harvest crews, and charged them a fee for picking and packing. In bad years—and the years had not been particularly good for a long time—the vast majority of growers often lost money, but the grower-packer-shippers were somewhat insulated from the weakening market. In 1965, the small and medium-sized growers, by this time heavily mortgaged and in debt, were in a near panic about the prospect of a significant rise in wages. The grower-packer-shippers—the DiGiorgio, Giuamarra, Divizich, Merzoian, Steel, Zaninovich, Pandol, Bianco, and Caratan families, plus a handful of others—while not nearly as threatened, were still uneasy about the industry’s long-range prospects. Jack Pandol had averaged only $22,500 in net income between 1961 and 1965 on a 2,000-acre ranch valued (along with all its equipment) at about $4 million, with gross annual sales of $1.35 million. As Pandol told the writer John Gregory Dunne in 1965, “A business that grosses that much and nets that little is in trouble.”7
These grower-packer-shipper families, all of them Catholic, some of them still headed by the patriarchs who had acquired the Tulare Basin land and put in the first vineyards, had settled in the area around Delano. Of the big grape growers, only Schenley and DiGiorgio were absentee landlords, and even the local DiGiorgio operation was run by one of the old man’s nephews, who lived near Arvin. These people, especially the Slavs (as the Croatian families are called around Delano), formed an insular community, where intermarriage was common, where even the second generation spoke with a slight Croatian accent, and the highlights of social life were grower luncheons, children’s christenings and first communions, dances at Slav Hall, and an occasional night on the town in Bakersfield. Even after they became rich, most remained wedded to agriculture and did not branch out into the professions. (Dunne noted that there was not one Slav doctor or lawyer in Delano).8 The fathers and sons were hands-on directors of their farm businesses, and although they didn’t prune, thin, girdle, pick, and pack themselves, they knew how that work was supposed to be done. Most of them got up early in the morning and spent a lot of time going over the various tasks of the day with supervisors and foremen. Their family stories were all about dedication and hard work, and many were intensely proud of what the first-generation immigrants had accomplished. They started out poor and now they had money. They were typically neither golf players nor country club bar sitters. They had plenty of land, big air-conditioned homes, nice cars, private planes, and expensive private educations for their children. They were more than just wealthy. They were an authentic rural bourgeoisie, but they were still proud of their peasant backgrounds, and were determined to remain rural small-town people. They were even proud of their insularity and lack of sophistication. Their one venture into big city life was their significant financial and political support for the Democratic Party.
The interests of these families were directly threatened by the farm workers’ demands for higher wages and union recognition. Aside from a direct calculation of cost, their whole understanding of themselves mitigated against any easy accommodation with a Mexican or Filipino union. The big growers had no doubts about their own story. They had worked hard and prospered. Their compatriots who had not worked hard, or who had made bad decisions, had failed. Wasn’t that the way of the world? Why should it be different for other poor immigrants? They lived in a world of easy assumptions about inherent racial inferiority and deficient national character, which went a long way toward explaining to themselves not only why they were successful and others weren’t but why it should remain ever so. In the Delano grape fields in 1965, racism and national chauvinism were not just historical and ideological baggage warping the world outlook of the major players; they were still part of the organization of production.